Chip-Package-Board Co-Design Methodology for Energy Harvesting DC-DC Boost Converters

In this work, a DC-DC converter design package - chip methodology is proposed, aiming on the successful codesign of the on-chip DC-DC converter with the package wire bonds and the printed-circuit-board (PCB) parasitic elements. The proposed methodology enables rapid design cycle while providing high accuracy results, as bond wires and PCB traces are represented with SPICE equivalent circuit models extracted with 2.5D finite-element modeling. A light energy harvesting DC-DC boost converter, used as product vehicle, is designed and implemented in a 0.18 mu m CMOS standard process. Measurements of the fabricated packaged chip show the significant contribution of the package and confirm the accuracy and design cycle speed-up of the proposed chippackage-board co- design methodology.